"Do You Have What It Takes to be a Successful Travel Writer?"

By Martin Li

        Travel writing is without doubt a glamorous profession. The lure of travelling to distant lands (often for free) and being able to share your experiences with others who are passionate about travel attracts many newcomers to the profession. However, it’s important to be aware that travel writing is not a free lunch. In return for the many benefits you can receive from travel writing come many onerous responsibilities.

        You need to be professional at all times. You need to be diligent in your research, trip planning and note-taking. You need to be hard-working in constantly improving your writing skills. You need to be creative yet unwaveringly objective in your writing. And you need to be persistent in everything you do.....

Persistence

        One of the most important traits all novice travel writers need to develop is persistence. Persistence to keep writing. Persistence to keep improving their writing. Persistence to keep submitting articles in the face of seemingly-endless rejections.

        As a travel writer, and particularly when you are a novice, you must be prepared to receive many rejections of both queries and manuscripts.

        When you receive a rejection, try to identify why the result was negative. You can sometimes ask an editor why a story wasn’t suitable. Was it the writing style (for example, was your story a third party narrative whereas first-hand accounts are preferred?) or was it the focus of your story?

        It’s not possible to be prescriptive about when you should, or indeed when it’s appropriate, to ask for feedback. You will need to get a feel for whether it’s appropriate in each instance. If an editor sends you the briefest of rejection notes, you can assume he or she is either very busy, or simply rude, neither of which suggests you will get much useful feedback.

        On the other hand, if you receive a more personal note to inform you of a decision, you might feel able to ask for some feedback and possibly even advice.

Take Rejection Gracefully

        You have to learn to take rejection gracefully. On no account must you express annoyance at an editor, no matter how grave a mistake you believe the editor has made in not accepting your manuscript. Do that and you can expect never to work with that editor.

        Don’t let rejection discourage you from submitting your next idea or story, to the same editor who just rejected your last idea if appropriate. Treat rejection as a positive learning experience. Learn what you can and move on: to the next publication, next article, etc.

        Getting articles published is to some extent a numbers game. The more quality proposals and manuscripts you send out, the more stories you will get published.

        However, don’t sacrifice accurate targeting of your work for the sake of sending out more queries. This is self-defeating and will result in you reducing, not increasing, your chances of getting published.

Computer Literacy

        You don’t need to be a techy to be a successful travel writer but you do need a certain level of computer literacy. It hopefully goes without saying that you need to be comfortable at word processing (handwritten manuscripts, invoices and correspondence are never acceptable) and the faster you can type, the more efficient you will be.

        However, in addition to word processing, many other areas of computer expertise will greatly help you progress your career. Providing editors with images to illustrate your writing is becoming increasingly important to getting your work published. Digital imaging and image manipulation are skills well worth learning. Creating pdf (portable document format) files can greatly improve the appearance of documents you transmit electronically. Databases can help you manage and search through lists of contacts and help you manage the status of outstanding queries.

Keep Writing

        Write regularly. This will help you learn to think like a travel writer and will help you hone your writing skills. Writing is like any skill in that it takes a little knowledge and a lot of practice. The more you write, the better you will become at writing.

        Writing regularly can also help motivate you to write more. It can be a virtuous circle. When you produce a strong lead or a phrase or paragraph that perfectly captures the point you are trying to make, you will know that it is good. It’s not being boastful but you will know at once that you have written something special. Do you think that will inspire you to write more or write less? Enough said. Try it for yourself and see the results.

Be Disciplined

        Our advice in an earlier part of the course was that most people should start travel writing part-time, even if they ultimately wish to become full-time travel writers. If you currently work full-time in a different occupation, you need to set aside regular time for writing. Block out periods of evening or weekend time (ideally at regular times so that you can get into a routine) that you are going to devote to your writing.

        Be disciplined. When you block out time for your travel writing, you are making a commitment to yourself. Honour your commitments - particularly when they are to yourself. This will help raise your self-esteem which will in turn help you bring a more positive attitude to your writing.

        It’s usually better to write regularly, say for an hour a day or every other day, rather than to have a huge burst once a week or fortnight. By writing regularly, you will keep ideas and stories ticking over in your mind, even if you are consciously doing something else.

        By keeping your travel writing projects fairly close to your consciousness, great ideas (for titles, leads, perfect phrases, etc) will come to you, often totally unexpectedly. Be ready to write these ideas down when they come to you. These "eureka" moments can be very fleeting and you may lose these ideas forever if you don’t capture them at once.

        If you are a full-time writer, you have no excuses not to write. It’s your profession and you must treat it as such. Schedule in your diary the dates when you intend to write specific articles and queries, and when you intend to carry out other tasks such as approaching tourist board officials to discuss hosting.

        Create a weekly or monthly "to do" list, ideally with target completion dates. This will give your writing activities focus. Each evening, schedule the specific tasks that you intend to carry out the next day. Each time you carry out a task, tick it off your daily and, if appropriate, weekly / monthly lists. This will confirm to you that you are making progress. This in turn will raise your belief in yourself, and this will help you bring more energy and enthusiasm to your writing.

Extracted from Part Ten of our course The Insider Secrets of Freelance Travel Writing.

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